by Knut Hamsun
The man sat still, thinking. Why didn’t he carry his paper the way every other person did, with its name on the outside? What sort of tricks was he up to? It didn’t look like he would ever let go of his parcel, not for anything in the world, he might even be afraid to entrust it to his own pocket. I could bet my life there was more in this matter of the parcel than met the eye.
I gazed straight ahead of me. The very fact that it was so impossible to penetrate this mysterious affair made me beside myself with curiosity. I searched my pockets for something I could give the man in order to start a conversation with him; I got hold of my shaving book but put it away again. Suddenly I took it into my head to be utterly shameless, patted my empty breast pocket and said, “May I offer you a cigarette?”
No thanks, the man didn’t smoke, he’d had to quit to spare his eyes—he was nearly blind. “But many thanks anyway!”
Had his eyes been ailing for a long time? Then he couldn’t even read maybe? Not even the papers?
Not even the papers, he was sorry to say.
The man looked at me. Those sick eyes were each covered with a film which gave them a glazed look; they appeared whitish and made a repellent impression.
“You’re a stranger here?” he said.
“Yes.” Couldn’t he even read the name of the paper he was holding in his hand?
“Hardly.” Anyway, he had heard right away that I was a stranger, something in my accent had told him. It took so little, his hearing was very good; at night when everybody was asleep he could hear the people in the next room breathing. . . . “What I wanted to ask was, where do you live?”
A lie appeared full-fledged in my head on the spur of the moment. I lied automatically, without meaning to and with no ulterior motive, and replied, “At 2 St. Olaf Place.”
“Really?” The man knew every stone in St. Olaf Place. There was a fountain, some street lamps, a couple of trees, he remembered it all. . . . “What number do you live at?”
Wanting to make an end of it, I got up, driven to extremities by my idea about the newspaper. The secret had to be cleared up, no matter the cost.
“If you can’t read that paper, then why—”
“At number 2, did you say?” the man went on, without paying any attention to my restlessness. “At one time I used to know every person in number 2. What’s the name of your landlord?”
I hit upon a name in a hurry to get rid of him, a name made up on the spot, and spat it out to stop my tormentor.
“Happolati,” I said.
“Happolati, yes,” the man nodded, without losing a syllable of this difficult name.
I looked at him with amazement; he appeared very serious, with a thoughtful air. No sooner had I uttered this stupid name that had popped into my head than the man was comfortable with it and pretended to have heard it before. Meanwhile he put his parcel away on the bench, and I felt my nerves tingling with curiosity. I noticed that there were a couple of grease spots on the paper.
“Isn’t he a sailor, your landlord?” the man asked, without a trace of irony in his voice. “I seem to remember that he was a sailor.”
“A sailor? Pardon me, it must be his brother that you know; this, you see, is J. A. Happolati, the agent.”
I thought that would finish him off, but the man acquiesced in everything.1
“He’s supposed to be an able man, I’ve heard,” he said, feeling his way.
“Oh, a shrewd man,” I replied, “a real business capacity, agent for all sorts of things, lingonberries to China, feathers and down from Russia, hides, wood pulp, writing-ink—”
“Hee-hee, I’ll be damned!” the old man broke in, extremely animated.
This was beginning to get interesting. The situation was running away with me, and one lie after another sprang up in my head. I sat down again, forgot about the paper and the remarkable documents, became excited and interrupted him when he spoke. The little dwarf ’s gullibility made me reckless, I felt like stuffing him full of lies come what may, driving him from the field in grand style.
Had he heard about the electric hymn book that Happolati had invented?
“What, an elec—?”
With electric letters that shone in the dark? A quite magnificent enterprise, millions of kroner involved, foundries and printing shops in operation, hosts of salaried mechanics employed, as many as seven hundred men, I’d heard.
“Just as I have always said,” the man remarked, softly. That was all he said; he believed every word I had told him and still wasn’t bowled over. This disappointed me a little, I had expected to see him utterly bewildered by my inventions.
I came up with a couple of other desperate lies, taking a mad gamble by hinting that Happolati had been a cabinet minister in Persia for nine years. “You may not have any idea what it means to be a cabinet minister in Persia,” I said. It was more than being king here, about the same as a sultan, if he knew what that was. But Happolati had managed it all and was never at a loss. And I told him about Ylajali, his daughter, a fairy princess who owned three hundred women slaves and slept on a bed of yellow roses; she was the loveliest creature I had ever seen, I hadn’t seen anything in all my life that matched her loveliness, God strike me dead if I had!
“She was that pretty, was she?” the old man remarked with an absent air, looking down at the ground.
Pretty? She was gorgeous, she was ravishingly sweet! Eyes like raw silk, arms of amber! A single glance from her was as seductive as a kiss, and when she called me her voice went straight to my heart, like a jet of wine. And why shouldn’t she be that beautiful? Did he think she was a bill collector or something or other in the Fire Department? She was simply divine, he could take it from me, a fairy tale.
“I see,” the man said, somewhat confused.
His composure bored me; I had gotten excited by the sound of my own voice and spoke in dead earnest. The stolen archival papers, the treaty with some foreign power or other, these no longer occupied my thoughts; the little flat parcel lay there on the bench between us, but I no longer had the least desire to examine it and see what was in it. I was completely taken up with my own tales, wonderful visions hovered before my eyes, the blood rushed to my head and I lied like a trooper.
At this moment the man seemed to want to leave. Raising his body slightly, he asked, so as not to break off the conversation too abruptly, “This Mr. Happolati is supposed to own vast properties, isn’t he?”
How did that disgusting, blind old duffer dare play around with the foreign name I had invented, as if it was just an ordinary name, one you could see on any huckster’s sign in town! He never stumbled over a single letter and never forgot a syllable; this name had taken firm hold of his brain and struck root instantly. I felt chagrined, and indignation began to stir in my heart against this person whom nothing could baffle and nothing make suspicious.
And so I replied, grumpily, “That I’m not aware of; in fact, I’m not aware of that at all. And by the way, let me tell you once and for all that his name is Johan Arendt Happolati, judging by his initials.”
“Johan Arendt Happolati,” the man repeated, surprised by my vehemence. Then he was silent.
“You should’ve seen his wife,” I said furiously. “A fatter woman—. Or perhaps you don’t believe she was really fat?”
Oh yes, of course he did—a man like that—.
The old fellow replied meekly and quietly to every one of my sallies, searching for words as if he were afraid to say something wrong and make me angry.
“Hell’s blazes, man, perhaps you think I’m sitting here stuffing you chock-full of lies?” I cried, beside myself. “Per haps you don’t even believe that a man with the name Happolati exists! What obstinacy and wickedness in an old man—I’ve never seen the likes of it. What the hell is the matter with you? Perhaps, on top of everything, you’ve been thinking to yourself that I must be a terribly poor fellow, sitting here in my Sunday best without a well-stocked cigarette case in my pocket? Let me tell
you, sir, that I’m not at all accustomed to such treatment as yours, and I won’t stand for it, God strike me dead if I do, either from you or from anyone else. Now you know!”
The man had gotten to his feet. His mouth agape, he stood there speechless, listening to my outburst until it was over. Then he quickly picked up his parcel from the bench and left, all but running down the path with short old man’s steps.
I sat watching his back, which gradually receded and seemed to stoop more and more. I don’t know where the impression came from, but it appeared to me that I had never seen a more dishonest, vicious back than this one, and I wasn’t at all sorry that I had given the creature a piece of my mind before he left. . . .
The day was on the wane, the sun was sinking, a soft rustle arose in the trees round about, and the nursemaids sitting in groups over by the seesaw were getting ready to push their baby carriages home. I was calm and felt at ease. The excitement I had just been through gradually subsided; I slumped over, grew limp, and began to feel sleepy. Nor was the large amount of bread I had eaten doing me any great harm anymore. In the best of moods, I leaned back on the bench, closed my eyes and felt more and more drowsy; I dozed off, and I was on the point of falling fast asleep when a park attendant placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “You can’t sit and sleep in here.”
“No,” I said, getting up instantly. At one blow my whole wretched situation rose vividly before my eyes once more. I had to do something, come up with some idea or other. To apply for a job hadn’t been any use: the reference letters I presented were old by now and written by people who were too little known to carry much weight; besides, these constant refusals all summer long had made me timid. Well, in any case my rent was due, and I had to find some way to pay it. The rest would have to wait awhile.
Quite instinctively, I had again gotten paper and pencil into my hands, and I sat and wrote mechanically the date 1848 in every corner of the page. If only a single scintillating thought would come, grip me utterly and put words in my mouth! It had happened before after all, it had really happened that such moments came over me, so that I could write a long piece without effort and get it wonderfully right.
I sit there on the bench and write 1848 dozens of times; I write this number crisscross in all possible shapes and wait for a usable idea to occur to me. A swarm of loose thoughts is fluttering about in my head. The mood of the dying day makes me despondent and sentimental. Fall has arrived and has already begun to put everything into a deep sleep; flies and other insects have suffered their first setback, and up in the trees and down on the ground you can hear the sounds of struggling life, puttering, ceaselessly rustling, laboring not to perish. All crawling things are stirring once more; they stick their yellow heads out of the moss, lift their legs and grope their way with their long feelers, before they suddenly give out, rolling over and turning up their bellies. Every growing thing has received its distinctive mark, a gentle breath of the first frost; the grass stems, stiff and pale, strain upward toward the sun, and the fallen leaves rustle along the ground with a sound like that of wandering silkworms. It’s fall, the very carnival of transience; the roses have an inflamed flush, their blood-red color tinged with a wonderfully hectic hue.
I felt I was myself a crawling insect doomed to perish, seized by destruction in the midst of a whole world ready to go to sleep. Possessed by strange terrors, I stood up and took several whopping strides down the path. “No!” I shouted, clenching my fists, “this has to end!” And I sat down again, picked up my pencil once more and was ready to attack my article in earnest. It would never do to give up when the unpaid rent was staring me in the face.
My thoughts gradually began to compose themselves. Taking great care, I wrote slowly a couple of well-considered pages, an introduction to something; it could serve as the beginning to almost anything, whether a travelogue or a political article, depending on what I felt like doing. It was an excellent beginning to many things.
Then I began to look for a definite question that I could deal with, some person or thing I could tackle, but I didn’t come up with anything. During this fruitless effort my thoughts began to get confused again—I felt my brain literally snap, my head was emptying and emptying, and in the end it sat light and void on my shoulders. I perceived this gaping emptiness in my head with my whole body, I felt hollowed out from top to toe.
“Lord, my God and Father!” I cried in agony, and I repeated this cry several times in succession without adding a word.
The wind fluttered the leaves, a storm was brewing. I sat a while longer, staring forlornly at my papers, then I folded them and put them slowly in my pocket. It was getting chilly and I didn’t have a vest anymore; I buttoned my coat up to the neck and stuck my hands in my pockets. Then I got up and left.
If only I had succeeded this time, this one time! Twice now my landlady had asked me for payment with her eyes, and I’d had to duck my head and sneak past her with an embarrassed greeting. I couldn’t do that again; the next time I met those eyes I would give notice and explain myself in all honesty. It couldn’t continue like this in the long run anyhow.
When I got to the exit of the park I again saw the old dwarf I had put to flight in my rage. The mysterious newspaper parcel lay open on the bench beside him, with lots of different kinds of food that he was munching on. I wanted to go and apologize to him right away, ask his forgiveness for my behavior, but his food turned me off. Those aged fingers, looking like ten wrinkled claws, were clutching the greasy sandwiches in their disgusting grip; I felt nauseated and walked by without addressing him. He didn’t recognize me—his eyes, dry as horn, just stared at me, and his face didn’t move a muscle.
I walked on.
As was my wont, I stopped at every posted newspaper that I passed to study the notices of job openings, and I was lucky enough to find one I could fill: a shopkeeper on Grøn-landsleret Street wanted someone for a couple of hours’ bookkeeping every evening; wages by agreement. I took down the person’s address and prayed silently to God for this job—I would ask less than anyone else for the work, fifty øre was plenty, or perhaps forty øre, come what may.
When I got home there was a note on my table from the landlady in which she asked me to pay my rent in advance or move out as soon as I could. I mustn’t mind her telling me, it was nothing but a necessary request. Cordially, Mrs. Gundersen.
I wrote an application to Christie’s, the shopkeeper, at 31 Grønlandsleret Street, put it in an envelope and took it down to the mailbox at the corner. Then I went back up to my room and sat down to think in my rocking chair, while the darkness grew more and more impenetrable. It was beginning to be difficult to stay up now.
The next morning I awoke very early. It was still quite dark when I opened my eyes, and only much later did I hear the clock in the downstairs apartment strike five. I wanted to go to sleep again but wasn’t able to, I felt more and more awake and lay there thinking about a million things.
Suddenly one or two good sentences occur to me, suitable for a sketch or story, nice linguistic flukes the likes of which I had never experienced before. I lie there repeating these words to myself and find that they are excellent. Presently they’re joined by others, I’m at once wide-awake, sit up and grab paper and pencil from the table behind my bed. It was as though a vein had burst inside me—one word follows another, they connect with one another and turn into situations; scenes pile on top of other scenes, actions and dialogue well up in my brain, and a wonderful sense of pleasure takes hold of me. I write as if possessed, filling one page after another without a moment’s pause. My thoughts strike me so suddenly and continue to pour out so abundantly that I lose a lot of minor details I’m not able to write down fast enough, though I am working at full blast. They continue to crowd in on me, I am full of my subject, and every word I write is put in my mouth.
It goes on and on, it takes such a wonderfully long time before this singular moment ceases to be; I have fifteen to twenty written pages
lying on my knees in front of me when I finally stop and put my pencil away. Now, if these pages were really worth something, then I was saved! I jump out of bed and get dressed. It is growing lighter and lighter and I can dimly make out the notice from the Director of Lighthouses over by the door, and at the window there is already enough daylight so I could see to write, at a pinch. I start making a clean copy of my pages right away.
A strange dense vapor of light and color rises up from these fantasies; I’m agog with surprise seeing one good thing after another, telling myself that it is the best thing I have ever read. Elated with a sense of fulfillment and puffed up with joy, I feel on top of the world. I weigh the piece in my hand and appraise it on the spot at five kroner, by a rough estimate. It wouldn’t occur to anybody to haggle about five kroner; on the contrary, judging by the quality of the contents one would have to call it a bargain at ten. I had no intention of undertaking such a special piece of work for nothing; as far as I knew, you didn’t find stories like that by the wayside. I decided in favor of ten kroner.
It was growing lighter and lighter in the room; glancing toward the door, I could read without great difficulty the fine, skeleton-like letters concerning Madam Andersen’s shrouds, main entrance to the right. Anyway, the clock had struck seven a good while ago.
I got up and stood in the middle of the floor. Everything considered, Mrs. Gundersen’s notice was quite opportune. This wasn’t really a room for me; the green curtains before the windows were rather tawdry, and there was anything but an abundance of nails on the walls for hanging one’s wardrobe. That poor rocking chair over in the corner was actually only a poor excuse for a rocking chair, you could easily laugh yourself sick at it. It was much too low for a grown man, and so tight that you had to use a bootjack, so to speak, to get back out of it. In short, the room wasn’t furnished with an eye to intellectual pursuits, and I did not intend to keep it any longer. I wouldn’t keep it under any circumstances! I had been silent all too long, putting up with living in this dump.
